- Pedro Pascal, Stephanie Hsu, Lupita N'yongo, Mark Hamill, Bill Nighy
- October 18th 2024
- 102
- Chris Sanders
A service robot becomes a surrogate mum to a gosling after being washed up on an island.
Move aside Inside Out 2, there’s a new contender for the Best Animated Feature Oscar in town.
The Wild Robot, the latest animation from DreamWorks, follows a service robot named Rozzum 7134 (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o), or Roz, after it is shipwrecked on an island inhabited only by animals.
As she is programmed to carry out tasks for her human owners, Roz doesn’t know what to do with herself on this island.
Enter a lonely gosling named Brightbill (Kit Connor), who she decides to raise as her own.
Using advice and expertise from a fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), Roz helps Brightbill learn how to fly and swim and strike out on his own.
The Wild Robot is the best film DreamWorks has released in years. The story is relatively simple but it’s told so well, giving us a film that is beautiful, heartfelt, joyous and moving.
This will entertain audiences of all ages – young people will enjoy the fun hijinks while the older generation will appreciate (and potentially cry at) its message about parenthood and getting your child ready to leave the nest.
The visuals are mind-blowingly stunning and they are accompanied by an affecting score by Kris Bowers and songs by Maren Morris.
While it is an emotional film, it is also really, really funny. There are jokes littered throughout the story but the first act is where most of the laugh-out-loud moments can be found.
This is where a fish-out-of-water Roz tries to offer her services to all the panicked animals.
All of the voice actors deliver excellent performances – particularly Matt Berry as a beaver and Catherine O’Hara as a possum – but Nyong’o is on another level as Roz.
She capably navigates the character’s evolution simply by her voice. She is more robotic at the start but eventually sounds more and more human as she learns how to care for Brightbill.
The Wild Robot would be a truly deserving winner of the Best Animated Feature Oscar because it is an almost perfect film from top to bottom. Remember to bring tissues and stay until the end of the credits!
In cinemas from Friday 18th October.
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